Social Development

Can South Africa really reduce its carbon footprint by 34%?

30 July 2010

For SA policy makers pressured to put the economy onto a stronger job growth trajectory, meeting ambitious climate-change goals will add to a tricky balancing act.

This is an extract from an article written by Carol Paton for the Financial Mail, published in the 30 July 2010 edition and online on 29 July 2010.

On December 6 last year, just before President Jacob Zuma jetted off to Copenhagen to meet 110 other heads of state, his office issued a press statement: South Africa would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020, and by 42% by 2025. Emissions were expected to rise until 2020, when they would peak, plateau for a decade, and then decline in absolute terms.

As the summit unfolded it became clear what must have happened: just as developing countries wanted to pressure developed countries into binding targets, the richer nations wanted the same from the emerging world. Allied with emerging powerhouses China, India and Brazil “” which had all come forward and made pledges “” and eager to play in the major league, SA had to commit to targets even if it did so in a rush and without a plan on how it would do it.

Therein lie the problems. SA’s commitment to an ambitious target will motivate more and bigger mitigating actions, which will be good for SA’s competitiveness in the long run. But the targets are far away from commercial and macroeconomic reality. Unlike China, India and Brazil, whose booming economies mean abundant resources are available for mitigation actions, the SA state does not have similar affluence.

What will the targets mean for the economy and business?

SA has a dirty economy, given its historical dependence on cheap coal to generate electricity. On a per capita basis, GHG emissions in SA are as much as the UK’s and close to Germany’s, despite being a smaller economy. Though the last GHG inventory in SA has the year 2000 as a baseline, it is now estimated that in terms of scale, the SA economy emits 500Mt of carbon dioxide in a year.

The Energy Research Centre (ERC) is the group that did the technical work that informed the 34% target. Three years ago the centre was asked by the then minister of environmental affairs & tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, to develop a set of long-term mitigation scenarios.

As it happened, there were significant differences between what in 2007 was assumed would happen and what is believed will happen now. For example, the growth assumptions in the “œbusiness as usual trajectory” were very bullish. As the economy slowed quite unexpectedly from 2009, it’s likely that the actual emissions were not as high as expected. But the 34% target remained.

A second difference was that much of what businesses like Eskom and Sasol believed was possible was based on the assumption that technology to do carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) “” which amounts to capturing emissions, turning them into solid form and then burying them in the ground or in sludge dams “” would be well-developed. But though CCS pilot projects have begun, the technology is a long way from being established.

In short, how SA will reach its 34% mitigation target from “œbusiness as usual” by 2020 is vague. Two processes are under way in government that will begin to tackle this. The first is to compile the climate change green paper, and then the white paper that will lead to legislation. The second is the compilation of the second Integrated Resource Plan (IRP2) by the department of energy, which will determine what SA’s energy mix will be for the next 25 years.

Trade & industry minister Rob Davies is looking to new green industries as job creators. The problem is that SA’s industrial policy aims to put SA on a path on which it beneficiates its mineral resources. Beneficiation is not compatible with a low-carbon future.

For SA policy makers pressured to put the economy onto a stronger job growth trajectory and speed up the delivery of social services, meeting ambitious climate-change goals will add to an already tricky balancing act.

Read the full article at the Financial Mail.